In my former article I expressed solidarity with Amina's freedom of expression, but refained from condoning Femen's activities, and wrote extensively on my approach to their method of activism. Femen fights for a woman's right to her own body, and their slogan runs as "Our mission is protest, our weapons are bare breasts". In my previous article I mentioned that by using nudity as a tool to fight female objectification is a counterproductive method. And a recent documentary directed by an Australian film-maker has confirmed and further reinforced my apprehensions about Femen as a group, and how it blurs the lines between freedom and sexual objectification.
Ukraine is not a Brothel, directed by 28-year-old Australian film-maker Kitty Green, has “outed” Victor Svyatski as the mastermind behind the group
Ms Green reveals that Svyatski is not simply a supporter of Femen but its founder and éminence grise. “It’s his movement and he hand-picked the girls. He hand-picked the prettiest girls because the prettiest girls sell more papers. The prettiest girls get on the front page... that became their image, that became the way they sold the brand,” she says.
The film claims it was he who sent Femen activists on one of their most terrifying missions to Belarus where (according to testimony in the film) they were arrested by secret service agents, stripped, humiliated and abandoned in a forest close to the Ukranian border.
Initially, Mr Svyatski refused to allow Ms Green to film him but she was determined that he should feature. “It was a big moral thing for me because I realised how this organisation was run. He was quite horrible with the girls. He would scream at them and call them bitches.”
“These girls are weak,” he says in the film...“They don’t have the strength of character. They don’t even have the desire to be strong. Instead, they show submissiveness, spinelessness, lack of punctuality, and many other factors which prevent them from becoming political activists. These are qualities which it was essential to teach them.”
...when he is asked directly whether he started Femen “to get girls”, he replies: “Perhaps yes, somewhere in my deep subconscious.”
One of the Femen campaigners talks of the relationship between the women and the movement’s founder as being akin to “Stockholm syndrome”, in which hostages feel sympathy for their captors.
According to this documentary, Femen was allegedly founded and is run by a man who abuses his power, selects the female activists based on their appearance and controls where they go. He exploits the fact that they're weak and dependent and, in essence, "sells" their bodies for publicity. And the most important fact is that these women let him get away with it. Whether or not their protest is real, whether or not their fundamental message is valid, their fundamental method is degrading and inundated with chauvinism and sexual objectification.“We are psychologically dependent on him and even if we know and understand that we could do this by ourselves without his help, it’s psychological dependence,” she says.
Or in other words, Femen does not practice what they preach. Surprised? I'm not.
